Happy holiday party snacks

Honoring an underheralded tradition: The refilling of the bowls of crunchy, salty nibbles

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December 21, 2010 7:01AM (UTC)

Every week, your challenge is to create an eye-opening dish within our capricious themes and parameters. Blog your submission on Open Salon by Monday 10 a.m. EST -- with photos and your story behind the dish -- and we'll republish the winners on Salon on Tuesday. (It takes only 30 seconds to start a blog.) Please note that by participating, you're giving Salon permission to repost your entry if it's chosen as a winner, and acknowledging that all words and images in your post are your own, unless explicitly stated. And yes, mashed potato sculpture counts as a dish. Emphatically.

This week, we asked for your best holiday party snacks.

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THIS WEEK'S WINNER:

Spicy crisp-roasted chickpeas by Cathy Elton: We here at Kitchen Challenge HQ are huge fans of frying beans until they're light and crisp. But Cathy's method of spicing and roasting chickpeas gives a similar effect, but without all the fat (for better or for worse).

In the Chinese New Year's tradition, the first thing people do when they wake up is eat a piece of candy, so that the rest of the year will be sweet. People eat shrimp, because the word for them, ha, sounds like laughing. Families feed each other a long, thin vegetable, fat choy, because its name sounds like the words for fortune and luck.

Soon, here in the West, our New Year will be upon us, and yet many of us don't have culturally symbolic foods to mark the occasion. (Notable exceptions include the black and Southern traditions of collard greens and Hoppin' John for money and luck.) So what are your New Year's food traditions? And if you don't have any yet, what dishes might you serve to start a new tradition? This week, please share with us your dishes to ring in the New Year.

Be sure to tag your posts: SKC New Year's (Please note that by participating, you're giving Salon permission to re-post your entry if it's chosen as a winner, and acknowledging that all words and images in your post are your own, unless explicitly stated. Adaptations of existing recipes are fine, but please let us know where the original comes from. And if you'd like to participate but not have your post considered for republication on Salon, please note it in the post itself. Thanks!)

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Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity and execution.